#Kylia's Fic Ideas

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

The first idea for a Worm fanfic that I had, before I even started reading Worm (remember, my entry into Worm was reading about Worm and the controversy about Amy in Ward and yada yada), but while I was reading Worm Fanfic, was an Amy Dallon Peggy Sue fic, but one a bit different from the small handful that I'd found and that hadn't lasted long.

Namely, I wanted one where after the end of Worm (i.e. after restoring Vicky's body and mind, or at least as much as she could, unwretching her, etc) Amy actually does leave Vicky alone, apart from a handful of times where they might accidentally end up in the same space during hero crises in the years after Gold Morning, etc. Eventually Amy moves extra far away from Vicky to reduce those chances.

The actual story opens with Amy on the eve of her 30th birthday. She's had a metric ton of Therapy, though she's hardly some perfectly functional person. She heals for a living, but to satisfy Shaper she has a whole greenhouse of modified plants and she only heals like 2-3 hours a day, barring emergencies. (Also, it's easier to do a task you hate - like healing - if you're getting paid a substantive wage for it, lbr). Anyway, Amy knows Vicky has ever right to not forgive her, given the mind influence and the rape (remember, hadn't read Worm at this point when the idea formed in my mind) and the wretching and stuff, but she can't help but want for her and Vicky to be able to be sisters again. She just doesn't act on that.

And then like, she opens an envelope as she walks into her home and it's an old picture from an old newspaper of Vicky and Amy as Glory Girl and Panacea from some publicity thing and she expresses some wish about if she could do it all again...

And then the next day, wakes up in her younger body, in her room at the Dallon house, back in 2011... the day after the Bank (i.e. the day the Undersiders face Bakuda at the storage place). Obviously at first it's a dream or a nightmare to her, etc etc, she's conflicted when she realizes it's real because now she can be sisters with Vicky again and make sure she never hurts her like she did but she still carries around all the guilt about what she did and feels like she believes she doesn't deserve to have that relationship with past Vicky (I have this whole vision of an early scene from Vicky's POV where she hears Amy going 'no, no, no, no' in her room - which is Amy realizing this isn't a dream and she's freaking out - and then Vicky, worried for Amy bursts in, breaking the door, Aura going wild and Amy feels fear (because the few times she and Vicky interacted after she dewretched her had Amy feeling fear from Vicky's aura) and Vicky realizes Amy is afraid of her, which of course makes Vicky wonder wtf is going on.

Anyway, cue Amy having to try and help save the world and prevent some of the shit that happens to Brockton Bay while only knowing some of what happened, so her ability to make things go better is limited. And wanting to maybe not have as many people die when they beat Scion this time and also maybe Taylor doesn't die, etc. Of course once she starts changing stuff unintended consequences, etc, etc.

And like, key to this fic would be all the guilt Amy carries around about raping Vicky.

And while I knew that the 'Amy raped Vicky' reading of the story was controversial and seen as a retcon by some, I wanted to work with it for this specific fic because it seemed like it would allow some really cool pathos and angst and dramatic reveals and stuff.

But having read 15.x now, I sit here and like - I cannot for the life of me see how to construct a chronicle of events using what we know of what happened where Amy's rape of Vicky actually works and makes sense and feels like something the character actually does.

15.x just... no. There's nothing there to work with.

Which kind of kills the entire idea as I conceived of it, since a key scene I had in mind did involve Amy trying to explain what happened to past Vicky - not giving excuses at all, just laying out what happened to get from point A (OG Amy as of the start of Worm) to point B (The girl who raped her sister)

(I have this vision in mind where Vicky is interrogating Amy trying to figure out what is going on with her [including an accusation of Amy being a stranger], eventually Amy mentions the 'I'm from the future' but Vicky's like 'why are you afraid of me and won't let me hug you and stuff' and Amy's like 'future you hates me for good reason' Vicky demands to know why, Amy, in a fit of high emotion and guilt and so forth screams 'I RAPED YOU!' and after bluescreening for a moment Vicky goes 'wait, so future me hates you because some sick, twisted Master controlled you and forced you to-' because of course Vicky of that point in time can't conceive of Amy ever doing that to her of her own free will and Amy is like 'No, no, you don't get to do that, I did that to myself too much in the past, but it's not true, as much as I might wish it was' or something)

But like, having read 15.x I try to imagine that scene now, Amy explaining the train of events from Bonesaw to Wretching and... I just can't quite figure out how it works.

I mean, if I ever write this and get that far, I can probably try to construct something (if I do write this, it won't be the first Wormfic I write) but like, when the idea first came to me, I knew that there was enough ambiguity in the text that large swaths of the readership genuinely didn't walk away from Worm thinking an actual physical sexual rape happened, but I figured there was something to work with, and there just really isn't.

[kyliafanfiction]

Every now and then, I get tempted by the idea of writing a fic where Amy stays being raised by Marquis, and Vicky is a single child, and someday the two of them end up meeting, superhero daughter of the superhero and supervillain daughter of the supervillain and get together and have a fun drama story around that, but like...

It's not really Amy at that point. Amelia Lavere in this story, even if she has the same powers as canon Amy, isn't... Amy. There'd probably be some personality similarities, yes, but she'd be unrecognizable. Vicky would be different too, though probably still recognizeable.

(Though god knows what having Carol's full attention might do to Vicky. Nothing good, I imagine)

It's an interesting concept for a story more broadly, but like... not really as an Amy/Victoria story, you know? I mean, if you're gonna write Amy/Victoria, Write Amy/Victoria, right?

Like, I'm sure I could tell an interesting story as a Worm fanfic with that, but I mean... what would the point of it?

[miniaturesketches]

Skyeward Fic Recs

Here's a new list including both old and recent works! I'm always on the hunt for beautifully written fics with great plots and compelling characterization - or you know, just enjoyable and quick fixes, that too - so this list will be updated from time to time. (Note: some fics are abandoned or incomplete.)

The Head & The Heart series by Poetgirl925 is my all-time favorite long fic, featuring a non-HYDRA Agent Ward who ends up planning and working on operations with Skye at the Triskelion. It's the lesser-known sister of the famous Under Your Skin fic by the same author.

the death of peace of mind by hellfxres involves a Hellfire! Ward working as a firefighter. That is, until Agent Daisy Johnson shows up at his station. I haven't finished reading this, but the premise is so interesting that it's on my list.

There is Nothing Special About Grant Ward by NezumiPi is one of my only two bookmarks. That's how good it is - a complex and absorbing exploration of Grant Ward's childhood as the son of a mob boss, his abusive relationship with Garrett, and his subsequent crimes. In custody at the Playground, Ward slowly is allowed to participate in operations again. (Note: this is not for the apologists and while there are interactions between Skye and Ward, they are not romantic in nature.)

You Know You're My Saving Grace by GreenEyedStone is historical fiction set in WW2. Unapologetically Skyeward, it follows the life of Skye, the daughter of the United States Air Force Major Phil Coulson, as she gets married to the soldier Grant Ward and has a child. She works on the frontlines in Europe as a journalist. (I'll admit I'm biased as I beta'd some of it, but I think this fic is criminally underrated.)

How to Keep Your Distance, Unsuccessfully by miniaturesketches, aka me, is an old two-shot. Set in Season 4, Daisy Johnson is on the run as a wanted vigilante, hunting down the Watchdogs. When she's severely injured, there's only one person she can call - Grant Ward, her old partner at S.H.I.E.L.D. (Note: "Ward Is Not HYDRA" fic.)

Four Bullets and A Dirty Smile by thefrenchmistake is one of the most popular Skyeward fics of the early 2020s. Not S.H.I.E.L.D-friendly, it's a classic Grant Ward redemption story. But my personal favorite from this author is the oneshot Maybe in One of Those, We Can Win It All, involving the multiple tragic universes in which Skye and Ward meet. So much angst.

I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day by go_astray_with_me, who is the queen of fun-to-read Skyeward. I'm always excited to read her oneshots (and PWP) when they turn up on the Skye/Grant Ward tag. This one is pretty much as the title says.

The Fine Dimensional Line by Kylia has one of the most exciting plots I've read. Grant Ward and Kara Palamas, desperate to escape HYDRA! Skye, take a gamble on one of Fitz's mad ideas - and end up in an alternate world, one where the fine line between loyalty and treachery, love and hate, worked out completely differently.

Real or Not by DrawntoDarkness is a classic oneshot. After being tortured, Skye has trouble differentiating truth from her implanted memories. She spends a day with each member of the team.

The Persistence of Memory by Eienvine is a "Ward goes through T.A.H.I.T.I." fic. James Shaughnessy is a respectable but average person living a respectable but average life . . . except for the dreams. Except for the scars on his body that he can't explain. Except for Daisy, the beautiful girl who comes to his restaurant sometimes and looks at him like she knows him.

The White Silence by starshine is a beautifully written oneshot. After they crash in the Canadian mountains, Ward must get an injured Skye to Providence. The fact that he is an enemy of SHIELD is of little importance in the face of hypothermia threatening to set in.

A Spy Like Me by colormeblue. After the Battle of New York, Grant Ward decides that he no longer wants Hydra to win its war with SHIELD and becomes a triple agent. Nick Fury gives him orders to work with Coulson's team in order to get valuable intelligence on Hydra but Grant finds his triple status and working with a team quite difficult.

Shades of Grey by imadetheline is another slowburn, Grant Ward redemption fic (unfortunately, abandoned). It was one of the first SW fics I read and I still have fond memories of it!

More coming soon!

[kyliafanfiction-archive]

P, Q, Z

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

*thinks of several she’s already come up with*

Okay, here’s a new one: Steampunk Buffyverse. So like, Wesley is using steampunk gadgets and Fred is some brilliant edges of science inventor. Buffy gets to use some kind of crazy steampunk stake launcher thing on her arm, and Jenny is using Charles Babbage-esque Difference engines. 

And Willow is an inventor who combines steampunk tech with magic, while Tara is the obligatory anti-tech witch, more concerned with natural balance (and that is a clash for Willow and Tara that they have to work with).

Wolfram and Hart wouldn’t even need to change a bit for it to work. 

So basically, the regular buffyverse - all the characters are still who they are - but Steampunk. And take the AU from there or somethink.

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

Outright abandoned? Fire Emblem. For one, the game moved onto to consoles I didn’t have - I played the GBA Fire Emblem 7 and Fire Emblem 8, but while my friend who I actually got into the series had a Gamecube and eventually Wii, so he kept up with the series, I never did. Besides, no FE game has ever been as fun as 7 for me (I played nine and ten - parts of them - on said friend’s consoles). 

Plus, well, with how awful my fic in that fandom is, I kinda don’t like to be reminded of it. Or associated with it. Apparently I actually got held up on livejournal (I only found this out years later) in some corners as a standard for bad writing - which I think I could make a very good case for being absurd, since there were much worse writers than I ever was in the same subgrene, But whatever.

Plus, there’s this very specific kind of fic in the FE fandom - exclusive to only FE7 fandom (more or less) - that is mostly what I want and not only is it very rare, but most examples of it are crap. I mean, most fanfic is “crap” to any given person, but this subgenre has a higher rate of it than most, IMO. Which really sucks.

And… I was also kind of a jackass, even more than I am now, to several people in the fandom on FFN. And I engaged in some pretty heavy char bashing in my fics and in the fandom spaces I was in, whereas these days I find char bashing in fic to be bad writing and char bashing in fandom spaces usually just pathetic.

Basically, I grew up as a writer, as a fan and as a person and so I’m not in the fandom.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Very helpful :P

Well, loosely related to the above issue - self insert fics are not actually a bad notion, per se. I mean, one of the classic works we’re always stuck reading in English class (Dante’s Inferno) is a self-insert, 

Self-inserts in of themselves are not bad. If one actually wrote onself honestly and accurately. The problem is that people often write these over the top idealized versions of themselves in the self-insert, which as a wish fulfilment self-indulgent sort of thing is fine, but is bad writing, more or less. 

But equally, far from every OC is a self-insert. Yes, we as writers often put something of ourselves into our characters - unavoidable - but fandom as a whole often simple accuses an OC of being a self-insert sue/stu and then just dismisses the whole thing.

The OC in the fic might not be a self-insert, and even if it is, that doesn’t mean the fic is automatically bad writing - though it often can be.

Fandom Ask Meme

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

 Social interaction: not where my talents lay.

[kyliafanfiction]

For me, there’s several ways to look at character sexuality and gender identity.

There’s what is clearly textually stated, what is clearly textually implied (which I generally avoid getting into), what I personally want/wish (usually but not always for shipping purposes, as shipping drives my fannish interest generally) and what would make for a more interesting story.

That last one can be applied to canon - i.e. I think the show is more interesting if we read canonically cishet character A as actually closeted/unrealizing bi/gay/trans/ace/whatever (though I don’t personally have one of these) or the story would be more interesting if the character was out one of those things.

But it can also be applied to fanfic - i.e. I think the story of this fanfic is more interesting, or I have a premise that requires, changing the canon sexualities or even what I think the implied sexuality is.

[kyliafanfiction]

Kylia!!!! Thank you so much for sending me an ask, I am literally getting so excited just reading it - you have no idea what you've done to me!!! But I am also so torn because I don't know if I should respond or finish my little mini gifset first, BUT I did want to talk time and write you a little message on here.

I am always in so much awe of you always posting your word counts for the day. I think it's so amazing you can write so much and every once in a while I always go back and read some of your fanfics (I just love Dead Man Walking and Exit Strategy). I like to read them on my kindle and yes, I have the Wesley/Lilah bits bookmarked ;) I swear I am too obsessed for my own good. I loved so much of what you had to say in Dead Man Walking, too.

Anyway, I hope you have such a good evening and, as someone who owns a bookstore (which is also literally so cool) do you have any books you would recommend?

^^ Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you love my fics. :D No rush on my ask, whenever you get the time.

As for books to recommend, I'm happy to offer some thoughts, but I was wondering if you could narrow down a bit more what you like to read? Going off the fact that you ship Weslah and (I think?) BatCat, you have a preference for enemies to lovers type stories, it sounds like, or otherwise stories that revolve around characters who start in some degree of opposition with eachother getting together?

Going from that, and bearing in mind that I can't read every book in existence :sweat_smile: I'd say the first thing that springs to mind is the Cruel Prince, first book of a series. I haven't read it, but I have heard good things, and it has that sort of enemies to lovers vibe, as I understand it.

I don't actually gravitate that much to Enemies to Lovers in actual novels, weirdly enough, though it's not a turn-off, it's just not what I tend to seek.

But I presume you aren't only into enemies to lovers, so I could give you some better recs with some more narrowing down

(These are questions I always ask customers when they ask for recommendations, fwiw ^^)

[kyliafanfiction]

I’m half-tempted to just... go and make a new main blog again or something, but it feels like too much work but damn if this one isn’t a mess and I kind of feel like having something more coherent and organized. But equally, I don’t actually have the energy for it.

Like, sure I want to write metas again, but I don’t really have the time. And I don’t really have much reach, so :shrug: And honestly between my two blogs I’ve said all my opinions about the fandoms I’m actually, really in. They change sometimes, somewhat, but they’re still broadly the same across time and space really, in most cases. 

But god knows it’s incoherent spread out like this, and this blog does have a whole ton of nonsense clogging it up.

Plus, while metas were fun to write, it’s more fun to write fic. I don’t write as much as I’d like, and like - remember when the whole point of this blog (of me having a tumblr at all) was to talk about my fics? 

Because I really don’t. I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts to go around and save all my metas @kylia-metas and have a sideblog dedicated to my fic that I’ve since deleted, but I just never have the energy or remember to sustain the idea. 

But part of me does feel like starting... maybe not fresh exactly but at least without all the clutter. But is there really any reason to?

[kyliafanfiction]

Honestly, when I do finish Smallville (probably in a month and change at current watchrate) I may have to start work on a divergence AU where Clark tells Lex the truth about his powers in Season 1, or at least something about them.

[kyliafanfiction]

Almost every time Lex does something I love him as a character more, and I get more and more dread in my heart for his eventual turn to evil.

At this point, depending on the specifics of how it goes, a “Lex doesn’t go evil” Divergence AU is probably in my writing future.

[kyliafanfiction]

I think I might be kind of racist against dwarves - the fantasy race, I mean

[kyliafanfiction]

Hi Kylia, I don’t mean this as an attack or anything! But why do you think Buffy is straight?

Because I do?

Irrespective of what people do in fanfiction - because you can do whatever you want in fanfiction, including alter character sexualities (albeit if you make a queer character… not, or change their queerness, you’re juggling hand grenades), the question of canon sexuality is a question of…

Well, what you think is canon. What is explicitly stated. What you interpret. And what you headcanon.

Leaving aside the fact that in the show (the comics having never counted as canon for me, and it’s not as though the comics rubbed themselves in glory over how badly they handled the the Satsu thing, based on everything I know) and the writers of the show very much intend Buffy to be read as straight - and they didn’t even plan on Faith being so aggressively flirty with Buffy (that was mostly Eliza Dushku) - I do see her as a straight character, all things said and done.

Death of the author is a thing, yes, that’s one of the reason fanfiction is so great, but understanding authorial intent is still worthwhile, even if you then intend to ignore it in your fics and personal soulcanon. But even ignoring that intent, I see no clear textual evidence to support the idea that Buffy is into girls.

As a general rule, in the absence of something I interpret as indication of non-straight orientation, I tend to assume a given character is.. well, straight. Straight people make up the majority of the global population. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to be correct if you assume a given random unknown person is heterosexual. Plus, TV shows, even today, still tend to be mostly straight because of various network/etc related reasons, or just… oblivious and heterosexual writers.

The only major exception to this rule of mine is Amy Madison - much as I hc her as bi, much as I do love Radison and Faimy, there’s no good textual evidence I can point to as a reason for thinking she’s into girls, not really. But my entire edifice of Amy Madison Headcanons is headcanons built on headcanons built on interpretations built on extrapolations, built on more headcanons. To be honest, the version of Amy Madison that lives in my head sometimes only bears passing resemblance to canon Amy, if you want to get technical. Amy is a whole different mess.

Back to Buffy though - I just don’t see any indication she has any romantic or sexual feelings towards any female character on the show, or women in general. She gets close with Faith, but I still, at the end of the day, don’t really see it as such.

And so, with no good indication otherwise, to my mind, and with my general fandom approach, I tend to assume that in canon, Buffy is straight.

Now, none of that means you can’t write all the fics about her being ace, gay, bi, pan or anything else you want her to be. It doesn’t mean you can’t write all the fics you want pairing her with Faith or Tara or Willow or Cordelia or a Genderbent Spike or whatever you want. 

It doesn’t mean I’m saying people can’t headcanon her as gay, bi, ace, pan, whatever, even if they can’t point to any specific textual evidence. Maybe they just have a ‘feeling’ - and that’s valid. Maybe they just prefer to imagine Buffy as not-straight because they’re not and that makes them feel better or they identify with Buffy or any other reason or none. 

And it doesn’t mean that people have to agree with me about the interpretations. I’ve read plenty of metas that seek to ‘prove’ that Buffy was into Faith, that she’s into girls, that she’s not just bi but gay gay gay. And that’s the great thing about fandom - that we can have these arguments. At the end of the day, I don’t find them very convincing, or at least not enough to change my mind. 

But that’s also the great thing about if - my interpretation/headcanon doesn’t challenge, change or affect yours. I can look at her one way, you can look at her another, and we can all live happily in the same fandom.

Because, ultimately: It’s Fandom - Do What You Want.